Dec. 1 (UPI) — Health officials in Gaza said at least 32 civilians had been killed and dozens injured, most of them women and children, in the first hours of the resumption of fighting in the strip after a 7-day truce expired early Friday.
The Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health wrote in a post on social media that the deaths took place in the first three hours of the end of the military stand-down.
The Israeli military resumed operations against Hamas just minutes after a week-long pause to get hostages out of Gaza and humanitarian aid in expired at 7 a.m., after Qatari peacemakers failed to broker an extension, with both sides accusing the other of breaking the agreement.
Israel Defense Forces said rockets had been fired at southern Israel from Gaza before the truce expired.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Friday that Hamas “didn’t respect its obligation to release today all the abducted women and launched rockets toward the citizens of Israel.”
As the focus of Israel’s renewed military campaign shifted to the south of the strip, IDF disseminated information directing civilians to evacuate to safe areas via leaflet drops and online, including a map “dividing the territory of Gaza into zones according to recognizable areas.”
“This enables the residents of Gaza to orient themselves and to evacuate from specific places for their safety if required,” IDF said in a post on X.
Calling the resumption of the fighting “catastrophic,” the United Nations urged the sides and nations to whom they might listen, to redouble efforts to secure an immediate cease-fire on humanitarian and human rights grounds.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said many more people in Gaza would be killed and others were at risk of being forcibly displaced to already severely over-crowded areas lacking adequate sanitation.
“The situation is beyond crisis point,” he said.
Netanyahu said the goal of resuming combat operations is “to release the hostages, to liquidate Hamas” and to ensure the citizens of Israel are never again threatened by an attack from Gaza.
An IDF spokesperson added Israel was “out to destroy” Hamas.
Maj. Doron Spielman told CNN Friday the IDF’s mission is to ensure that Hamas “can never commit this crime in Israel again, and along the way, bring our people home.”
Spielman added the military’s targets remain “Hamas strongholds, Hamas terrorists and where they shot the rocket launchers.”
Sirens warned of an incoming rocket in Israel in the hour before the truce was due to expire Friday. The rocket was intercepted, but sirens have continued to wail in Israeli communities near Gaza ever since, as more incoming firepower rocked Israel.
“Sleeping Israelis once again woke up to the sound of the red siren of Hamas rockets falling at us once again from Gaza,” Spielman told CNN.
He also said that “multiple rockets” were intercepted Friday.
Spielman contended Hamas was not targeting troops, but firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, threatening the lives of civilians and said the IDF had no choice but to respond, acknowledging that the response could, in turn, threaten civilians in Gaza.
“We don’t want to see Gaza civilians die, but Hamas is operating directly from within those areas, and we have to ask ourselves what is the alternative?” he said.
“If we do nothing, if we lay down our arms, we are just going to allow Hamas to carry out another massacre like Oct. 7. I think morally that is completely unconscionable,” he said.
Officials said they were continuing to work toward securing a more permanent cease-fire despite the resumption of fighting, or at least an extension of the temporary one that disintegrated on Friday.
